I deserve more credit in general

I was staring out my window just now, watching two birds have sex on the fire escape (ah, springtime!), and it reminded me of the time I saved a man's life. Well, not a man so much as a college student; an adult, I think, would have had the sense not to fall out of a window like that.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Let me set this up.

It was probably around this time of year, nearing the end of freshman year, Univershitty of Crotchshitster class of '96 (not to be confused with "Class of '96", which, I believe, did not premiere until the following fall, but that is really a subject more fitting for my other site, retro80sand90sflashback.biz). It was, as I recall it, a warm night. The regular gang was hanging out in Dan and Toby's room. I believe it was gin that night. I further believe that was the night we did something called barbershop shots, or something like that. It involved taking a shot and sitting back really fast, or something dumb like that. I promise that we did not make a game out of drinking most nights. Most nights we'd just drink and smoke pot and then someone would throw up and we'd go back to our rooms and go to sleep. If there were drinking games, I managed to steer clear of them. But this night, someone had the idea to do this stupid thing, and we did it. I'm sure it got me drunk, but ten shots of gin will tend to do that to a teenager anyway, so I cannot vouch for the efficacy of this particular device, whatever exactly it may have been.

So many nights tend to blend together from this period. Was this one of the nights when the RA knocked on the door and questioned us about the smell of pot? Was it one of the nights when there was a fire drill so we just shut off the lights and kept drinking? All I remember is that at some point, probably around one in the morning, I decided it was too nice a night to sit indoors. No one else agreed, so I set off alone. On my way out, I noticed the window by the dorm's exit (slash-entrance) was open, so for some reason I decided to exit that way. It was all of two-and-a-half, maybe three feet from the cold, unforgiving patch of grass below, but I was feeling indestructible, probably from all that gin. I've heard before that really drunk people sometimes survive horrific car accidents because they're too out of it to brace themselves the way a sober person would, and are thus relaxed enough to let their bodies be tossed around a little instead of tightening up and forcing their spines to fight momentum. Or words to that effect. If I thought anybody was reading this, I'd go back and clean up that sentence. Anyway, whatever. The point is that he principle behind that drunk driver thing is probably what allowed me walk away from my daring leap. A long fucking way to go for that payoff, huh?

Once I got my bearings, I saw my old pal Rudy "El Gatito Cansado" Alvarez (whom I've given the name of a fake boxer to protect his identity, as the last time we communicated, he seemed like he'd become very stern in his adulthood and by now would probably want to distance himself from me as much as possible. Fucking jerk.) sitting on the stoop in front of Gilbert Hall's other entrance/exit, which faced the one I would have just come out of had I not been the devil-may-care rogue with ice water in his veins that I knew not how NOT to be. (So you can picture it better, the building is basically C-shaped, with doors at the two ends and basically just a big empty, lawn in the middle. Anyway...

I'd known Rudy from high school. He was the guy who first introduced me to pot, oddly enough. Smoked it with an empty Coke can in my parents' basement. Turned out to be fake, apparently. He was a good guy, a close friend for many years who grew increasingly to see me as a reprobate as he increasingly became a fan of latter day white ska. I'm not entirely sure there's a connection between the two other than that they seemed to occur simultaneously, but I can kind of see how they could fit together. At least, I kind of hope they do; I strive, in my way, to be all things that ska is not. If you see me in a pork pie hat, I pray to God it's because someone cut my head off and put a pork pie hat on top of it. In Rudy's credit, he never got that far into it, as far as I know. Maybe he bought a pair of black and white patent leather shoes or something, but it's not like he walked around dressed like the trombonist from Reel Big Fish (assuming Reel Big Fish had have a trombonist and he/she dressed/s like a ska person). Christ, this thing has spiraled into nothingness, hasn't it? Oh well.

So I go over to Rudy, who at this point in time still presumably likes me, and I sit down beside him and we start having a nice chitchat. I always liked Rudy and he, at this point, still seemed to like me, had never once let his true, sinister nature slip through in my presence, had been expertly careful to keep his disloyalty a secret. So we talked and were having a gay old time of it when, alls of a sudden, this guy plummets backwards out of a third story window onto the courtyard below. Being a dormitory on a college campus, the area was pretty well-lit, but being late at night, it was also pretty dark. Furthermore, neither of us were looking at the side of the dorm when it happened. I can't speak for Rudy (and if I could, I'd be too busy telling me what a great friend I am and how much I''ve missed my sparkling wit all these empty years that have passed since I last beheld your awesome countenance, oh my great hero, oh my Messiah!), but I remember a blur, then a thump. Rudy and I looked at each other. He said something like, "Did someone just fall out of a window?" I remember him sounding drunker than he sounded a moment before, and I remember feeling strong and alert. I don't recall what i said in response, but I know that I was quick to my feet, and quick to the body.

The guy was on his back, not moving but groaning weakly. I looked up at the window from which he'd fallen. There was a girl there, panicking. "Is he okay?" she cried.

"I don't know! Call Security" I shouted, but she was frozen in panic. I started knocking on the nearest window until another girl I didn't know opened it. "Someone fell out of the window," I told her. "You have to call Security."

"Oh my God," she said. "What happened?"

"I don't know! Just call Security!"

So she did. I stood watch by the body, and tried to assure him that help was on the way. Maybe Rudy stayed with me, but in the way I want to remember it, he was afraid Security would write him up for being drunk and so ran off to hide under his bedclothes. Or maybe he stuck around. Though I really do think he took off. Either way, I'd taken point, and was thus shocked and insulted when the dweeb from Campus Security finally showed up, saw me sitting by the injured student, and forcefully demanded that I not touch or move him. I explained to the guy, who was no older than I and definitely a much bigger nerd, that not only had I not endeavored or planned to move the patient, but that I was the one who saw him fall and got someone to call the incident in to Security. The guy from Security made me leave.

That's pretty much the end of the story. The kid lived. I know he was in a wheelchair for a time, but I don't think it was expected to be permanent. Apparently, he'd gotten drunk at an event for one of the few fraternities I can confidently say was lamer than the one I was in. There were rumors of lawsuits and charter revocations and all that good shit, but I never really heard anything about it once the guy was out of the hospital and back to school. I thought about sending him an anonymous letter tipping him off to the true identity of the mystery hero who saved his life, but decided that, in the end, being a hero is kind of its own reward. Plus, if there's a Heaven, I''m probably at least gonna get a suite.